Impacts of Stress and Anxiety from Work in College Students

The fact that most working American students experience stress and anxiety in their daily lives comes as no surprise. Normally, a certain amount of stress and anxiety is present at work as well as at home. However, excessive, persistent and irrational stress and anxiety interfere with everyday functioning. This often indicates the existence of an anxiety disorder. It is important to realize that the corporate workplace is filled with stress and anxiety. As a consequence of the economic downturn, many students have to work to meet the costs of a college education as well as other necessary expenses. Many of today’s college students have experienced a financial wake-up call due to the effects of the Great Recession of 2008. Furthermore, the rising cost of college as well as the student debt crisis has made it necessary for students to juggle work with studies. Most of the states have cut funding for higher education hence placing more financial burden on students. While working while studying can build character and teach students time management skills, work can have negative psychological consequences on students. Workplace pressures create high levels of stress and anxiety, making it hard for students to complete their studies. Therefore, workplace stress and anxiety have serious negative impacts on college students. 

Purpose 

The purpose of the research is to investigate the impacts of stress and anxiety from work in college students. There are some things that are inevitable when one is a student. Therefore, stress, anxiety as well as a persistent feeling of nervousness might be the case for many college students in America. There are many significant factors that are important when examining stress and anxiety in college students. There are some outside factors that are likely to increase such a horrible feeling and trigger stress and anxiety such as workplace issues, past detrimental experiences, family issues exercise, sleep and mental health. Therefore, some individual studies that were done on college students will be examined and analyzed. It is important for students to recognize when emotions interfere with their ability to function so that they can seek the necessary help. Stress and anxiety have been reported in America as top factors that have a significant potential for impacting academic performance negatively. Normally, stress refers to the body’s response to body’s demands that may, at times, become overwhelming. Feeling too much stress can lead to serious psychological health problems that could negatively interfere with the everyday life of college students. Therefore, students need to be guided on what they can do to effective manage their stress. Anxiety, like stress, is prevalent among college students. When anxiety occurs frequently, it can interfere with the college student’s everyday life. Interestingly, anxiety adds the component of fear and students should be keen to report the condition to receive that appropriate help. The research will focus on the various impacts of workplace stress and anxiety in college students. Knowing and understanding the various impacts of stress and anxiety from the workplace can help considerably in identifying the appropriate intervention measures for the affected students. 

Theoretical Framework 

It is important to realize that systematic theoretical and research inquiry has the potential of providing a lasting solution to stress and anxiety. The person-environment fit is a theory that underpins other approaches to stress and wellbeing to a significant extent. The theory attributes the causes of behavior to the environment and personality traits. Therefore, the theory seeks to conceptualize the interaction between the person and the environment as the key to understanding affective, cognitive and behavioral reactions. The Person-environment fit theory posits that an optimal fit between and individual and his or her environment is needed for effective human functioning. The person-environment fit theory is important because it based essentially on the idea that employee adjustment in the workplace is critical for the overall wellbeing of an individual (Schaufeli & Taris, 2014). As such, there should be a degree of congruence between the particular demands that people confront at work and their abilities to meet those demands. There should also be a correspondence between the physical and psychological needs of an individual and the resources available to him or her. Most of the studies conducted on the relationship between person-environment fit and well-being have focused specifically on the lack of fit between the needs and resources. This lack of fit between needs and resources among employees in the workplace has a significant on stress and anxiety levels as well as the overall well-being. 

The theory is based on a number of stimuli such as work complexity, workload, social interaction with work colleagues and level of authority that the individuals prefer to have and the actual level of strain received. For instance, an employee may wish to have an extensive amount of contact with other employees and get to experience such an amount. As such, this will represent a case of a strong match between what people want and what they receive. A strong match between what people wants and what they receive represents a case of high psychosocial well-being in the individual. On the other hand, the theory postulates that high strain occurs when there is a mismatch between an individual’s needs and what he or she confronts in the workplace. When an individual strongly desires interpersonal contact and but does not receive it, the strain experienced will be significantly high. 

The theory, therefore, seeks to emphasize that there needs to be a match between what people want and what they receive. Similarly, there should be a fit between their abilities and the demands placed upon them in the workplace. It is important to realize that a certain misfit creates a significant strain that reduces the sense of psychosocial well-being. Therefore, the needs-supply fit and the demand-ability fit are significantly relevant to people particularly when the stimuli are important to them. Furthermore, expectations concerning career advancement in the workplace are clearly important to many employees. As such, a match between preferred levels of career advancement and the perceived opportunities available would significantly enhance job satisfaction, mental and physical wellbeing. The concept inherent in the person-environment fit has received widespread recognition in the field of occupation and wellbeing literature as numerous investigations have been designed around this concept. The theory, therefore, occupies an important position in the conceptualization of work stress and anxiety that impacts college students. Investigating the effects of work-related stress and anxiety is important in the development of intervention and coping strategies. 

Literature Review 

Vast sources of literature document the prevalence and severity of stress and anxiety from work on college students. About one-third of US college students have a difficulty functioning due to stress and anxiety according to the 2013 National College Health Assessment. Shockingly, approximately 30 percent of the students seeking services for mental health report that they have seriously considered committing suicide due to stress and anxiety arising from both internal and external stressors. Therefore, there is need to educate college students on better ways of coping with stress and anxiety. 

Stress 

Stress refers to anything that poses a challenge or threat to an individual’s well-being. Some of the stresses get an individual going, and they are considered good. Lives would be boring without any form of stress as lives would probably feel pointless. However, when stresses undermine both the mental and physical health of a person, they are bad. There is a difference between stress and a stressor. A stressor refers to the agent or stimulus that causes stress to an individual. On the other hand, stress is the feeling that people have when under pressure. Therefore, stressors are the things that people respond to in the environment. The more stressors an individual experiences, the more stressful he feels. The way a person responds to a challenge may also be a type of stress. Part of a person’s response to a particular challenge is physiological and affects the physical state of the person involved. Additionally, a person’s flight response is the body’s sympathetic nervous system reacting to a stressful event. The body releases larger quantities of chemicals such as adrenaline, cortisol, and noradrenaline, which trigger a higher heart rate, sweating, heightened muscle preparedness, and alertness. Such factors serve to help a person protect him or herself from dangerous or challenging situations. During periods of stress, some of the non-essential functions stop, such as the digestive systems and the immune system when responding to stressors. 

Most of the people have varying interpretations of what stress is about, and what matters. Some individuals may focus on what happens to them such a losing a tooth, getting a promotion or being fired in the workplace. Others may focus on the event itself. Essentially, what matters, are the thoughts of individuals about the situations in which they find themselves. People continually size up the situations that confront them in life. Individuals assess each situation, deciding whether something is a threat or not as well as how they can deal with it and the resources they can use. If a person concludes that the required resources needed to effectively deal with a situation are beyond their beyond what he or she has available, the situation will be considered stressful. As a result, an individual will react with a classical stress response. Alternatively, if an individual believes that the available resources and skills are more than enough to deal with the situation, it is not considered stressful. 

How individuals respond to stress affects their health. Some of the situations which are not negative may still be perceived as stressful. This is people think that they are not completely prepared to effectively deal with a stressful situation. Therefore, it is important to realize that what matters more than the situation itself are the thoughts about the situation when one is trying to manage stress. How a person sees a stressful situation will be the largest single factor that impacts on his or her physical and mental health. As such, an individual’s interpretation of events and challenges in life may decide whether they are invigorating or harmful. Essentially, a persistently negative response to challenges will ultimately have negative effects on an individual’s health and happiness. People who tend to perceive things negatively should understand themselves and their reactions to stress-provoking situations better. 

Anxiety 

Anxiety refers to a feeling of unease, such as worry or fear that can either be mild or severe. Every person has a feeling of anxiety at some point in their life. For instance, a person may feel worried and anxious about sitting an exam in college or even having a job interview. During such times, feeling anxious can be perfectly normal. However, anxiety becomes excessive and can cause the victims to dread everyday situations. Research suggests that both biology and environment can contribute to anxiety. The exaggerated worries and expectations of negative outcomes in unknown situations that typify anxiety are usually accompanied by physical symptoms which include headaches, muscle tension, stomach cramps, and frequent urination. Behavioral therapies aimed at controlling symptoms have proved highly effective against anxiety, particularly in children. 

Anxiety represents a body’s natural response to danger, an automatic alarm that goes off when an individual feels threatened. When anxiety interferes with an individual’s relationships and activities, the individual crosses the line from normal anxiety into the territory of anxiety disorders. Anxiety disorders can look different from person to person because they are a group of related conditions rather than a single disorder. As such, an individual may suffer from intense anxiety that strikes without prior warning. Some individuals may struggle with a disabling fear of driving or even uncontrollable and intrusive thoughts that impact negatively on their well-being. Despite the different forms, all anxiety disorders share a common major symptom: severe worry or fear in situations where most people would not feel threatened. 

Work Stress and Anxiety 

Work Stress and anxiety refers to the response people may have when presented with work demands and pressures that are not matched to their knowledge and abilities which cause a feeling of unease as they challenge their ability to cope. Work-related stress and anxiety is a growing problem around the world. Stress and anxiety not only affects the health and well-being of employees, but also the productivity of organizations. The odds are that one in nine employees in an organization will suffer from an anxiety disorder at some point in his or her life (McCraty et al., 2003). Stress and anxiety in the workplace arise where work demands of various types and combinations exceed the person’s capacity and capability to cope. Various events can cause work-related stress in the workplace. For instance, an individual employee may feel under pressure if the job demands are greater than they can comfortably manage. Additionally, other sources of work-related stress and anxiety include conflicts with co-workers or seniors, threats to job security, such as potential redundancy and constant change. A person’s psychological make-up among other factors may influence whether a person experiences work related stress. It is important to realize that a healthy job is likely to be one where the pressures on the employees are appropriate about the amount of control they have on their work, their abilities and resources, and the support they receive from people who matter to them in the workplace. Furthermore, a healthy work environment is the one in which there is an abundance of health-promoting conditions as well as the absence of harmful conditions. These may include appropriate practices such as continuous assessment of risks to employee health, provision of appropriate information and training on health issues as well as the availability of health-promoting organizational support. Essentially, health does not refer to merely the absence of infirmity or disease but a positive state of complete mental, social and physical well-being. Workplace stress and anxiety usually occur in a wide range of work situations, and it is often exacerbated when the employees feel that they have little to no support from supervisors and colleagues. Additionally, work stress and anxiety may contribute to little control over work processes. 

Workplace stress and anxiety may be unavoidable due to the normal demands of the contemporary work environment. There is always pressure at the workplace that is considered normal and acceptable by an individual. This kind of pressure may be helpful in keeping workers alert able to work and learn, and motivated based on the available resources and personal characteristics of an individual employee. However, stress arises when the pressure at the workplace becomes excessive and unmanageable. As a result of stress, an employee’s health and business performance can be negatively affected. Poor work organization can be a significant cause of work-related stress. The way jobs and work systems are designed as well as how they are managed play a significant role in promoting employee physical and mental well-being. Unsatisfactory working conditions, poor management and lack of support from seniors also contribute to employee stress and anxiety. 

Research shows that most of the most stressful type of work is the one that values excessive pressures and demands that are not corresponding to the worker’s knowledge and abilities, where there is little support from colleagues and where there is an opportunity to exercise any choice of control. To reduce work stress and anxiety, the workplace pressures should be matched to the employee’s knowledge and abilities. 

Recognition and respect at the workplace help to significantly promote the mental and physical well-being of employees. Being respected by significant others in the workplace help to reduce stress and anxiety. Normally, employees go to great pain to gain acceptance and approval from colleagues and seniors. As such, many of the stressful experiences are caused by being offended by colleagues through ridicule, social exclusion, social conflict and illegitimate tasks. Being treated in an unfair manner may constitute an offense to self which may have quite far reaching consequences in relation to health and wellbeing. To increase the motivation and satisfaction among employees, it is worth ensuring that they get appreciated. Appreciation is one of the important factors that help to reduce workplace stress and anxiety. 

African Americans and Work Stress and Anxiety 

Being a black employee comes with a lot of challenges in the workplace. Most of the black employees, particularly those in white-collar positions requiring specialized training and credentialing, find themselves in work environments where they are in the racial minority. Working in a predominantly white environment is associated with significant psychological costs for black employees. Research shows that black employees work to carefully manage their emotions in ways that reflect the racial landscapes that they inhabit. As a result, the African American employees are constantly under pressure to meet the expectations of their white counterparts as there is a way they are expected to act or behave in a male-dominated work environment. Working among majority white employees presents significant psychological stress to African American employees in some of the organizations. This is because black employees are expected to show feelings of conviviality and pleasantness even in response to sensitive racial issues. Black employees felt that emotions of frustrations, annoyance, and anger were discouraged, even though they worked in environments where such emotions were welcomed (Mawritz et al., 2014). This contributes significantly to workplace stress and anxiety as they feel discriminated. Furthermore, African Americans often hold back their sincere feelings and emotions to gain approval from their white counterparts, especially during diversity training. Although such discussions are meant to encourage racial sensitivity, many of the black employees found the diversity training, which are meant to improve the work environment for minorities, are a source of emotional stress and anxiety. The black employees may perceive that their white colleagues could use such sessions to express negative emotions about people of color. Therefore, the consequently fail to disclose their honest emotional reactions to such statements. 

While organizations strive to create and put forth an appropriate workplace identity for members of the minority groups, it becomes particularly taxing because the working identities of the minority groups must counter common cultural stereotypes. For instance, African American males may feel compelled to work for significantly long hours as a strategy to repudiate stereotypes of a poor work ethic among blacks. However, such strategies may backfire and reinforce other stereotypes instead. Working for longer hours may lead their white colleagues to believe that black workers lack the intellectual preparation needed for professional jobs. 

The minority professionals in the workplace also tread cautiously to avoid upsetting the sensibilities of the majority groups. Such employees could be visibly black but they may not want to be perceived as stereotypically black colleague. Some of the black female colleagues may feel compelled to chemically straighten their hair to appear more like the majority group members in the workplace. This may subject her to significant psychological and physical stress as she may feel racially discriminated. Such workplace behaviors among black women signify deep-seated but often unspoken racial norms in the workplace. It is important to note that such feelings may increase the levels of stress and anxiety hence impacting negatively on the mental and physical health. Furthermore, Latino attorneys may be able to advance further in their careers if they take pains not to speak with any trace of an accent. 

Employees from minority races in the United States experience difficulties finding mentors of the same race, coping with racial stereotypes, and being treated as a representative of their entire racial group. This indicates the degree to which race shapes occupational outcomes for people of color. Therefore, such work-related stresses couple with perceived racial discrimination may impact negatively on employees who double up as college students. 

Impacts of Work Stress and Anxiety on College Students 

Students who are working are typically under immense stress than students who do not work. Career and academic responsibilities may give rise to significant stressors that may increase stress and anxiety. College students who are working have to factor in the stresses associated with juggling between work and studies. There are several effects of stress and anxiety among working college students such as lack of concentration and poor performance. Research has shown that stress and anxiety impact negatively on the concentration ability of college students. 

Stress and anxiety can influence the students' ability to concentrate. The signs and symptoms of Stress and anxiety include increased frequency of headaches, recurring colds and headaches, frequent muscle aches and fatigue. There are also emotional symptoms associated with stress and anxiety including increased levels of frustration and anger, being more irritable or disorganized than usual, a greater sense of persistent time pressure and increased difficulty in getting things done (Misra & McKean, 2000). Therefore the physical and emotional symptoms of stress and anxiety make it difficult for students grappling with to effectively concentrate in their studied. This may translate to poor performance in class as well as likelihood not to complete studies. 

Managing the role of workplace and college student are mentally strenuous hence causing stress and anxiety. This may increase the likelihood of being absent in class. Poor class attendance affects the performance of students significantly. Being absent from class can be caused by stress and anxiety related complications such as lack of sleep, poor appetite as well as frequent sickness. Learning and memory can also be significantly affected by stress and anxiety. Therefore, the college students suffering from work-related stress and anxiety may not remember much of what they are taught in class leading to poor performance. As such, the chances of such students to successfully graduate from college reduce considerably. It is necessary to have good learning and memory ability to conceptualize learning concepts. Stress, therefore, poses a significant threat to academic performance among students who are suffering from work-related stress. 

The social lives of the students dealing with work stress and anxiety find it difficult to socialize with colleagues because of low self-esteem. As such they may lack the confidence to consult with the lecturers because they are socially withdrawn. As such, gaining a good understanding of the lessons taught in class may be a significant challenge. The problem may be compounded for African American students dealing with work stress and anxiety. This is because they may fail to express their concerns openly, particularly in a white majority environment. They may hold back to repudiate the stereotype that black people lack intellectual ability to conceptualize academic issues. To prove themselves intelligent, they may not raise concerns regarding their academic performance. 

Stress and anxiety from work may cause significant mental health effects on college students. Although lives would be boring without any form of stress, the significant stressors that working students face may impact their mental health negatively. This is because stresses undermine both the mental and physical health of a person and they are bad for the well-being of the sufferers (Von Ah et al., 2004). There is a difference between stress and a stressor. A stressor refers to the agent or stimulus that causes stress to an individual. On the other hand, stress is the feeling that people have when under pressure. Therefore, stressors are the things that people respond to in the environment. The more stressors an individual experiences, the more stressful he feels. The way a person responds to a challenge may also be a type of stress. Part of a person’s response to a particular challenge is physiological and affects the physical state of the person involved. Additionally, a person’s flight response is the body’s sympathetic nervous system reacting to a stressful event. The body releases larger quantities of chemicals such as adrenaline, cortisol, and noradrenaline, which trigger a higher heart rate, sweating, heightened muscle preparedness, and alertness. Such factors serve to help a person protect him or herself from dangerous or challenging situations. During periods of stress, some of the non-essential functions stop, such as the digestive systems and the immune system when responding to stressors. When the stress and anxiety reach significant levels, the mental and physical health of the victims may be affected seriously. 

Conclusion 

In conclusion, it is demonstrable that work stress and anxiety impact negatively on the academic performance, social life and the mental health of college students who work. This is because excessive, persistent and irrational stress and anxiety interfere with everyday functioning. This often indicates the existence of an anxiety disorder. It is important to realize that the corporate workplace is filled with stress and anxiety. As a consequence of the economic downturn, many students have to work to meet the costs of a college education as well as other necessary expenses. Furthermore, the rising cost of college as well as the student debt crisis has made it necessary for students to juggle work with studies. While working while studying can build character and teach students time management skills, work can have negative psychological consequences on students. Workplace pressures create high levels of stress and anxiety, making it hard for students to complete their studies. Therefore, workplace stress and anxiety have serious negative impacts on college students. 

References  

Mawritz, M. B., Folger, R., & Latham, G. P. (2014). Supervisors' exceedingly difficult goals and abusive supervision: The mediating effects of hindrance stress, anger, and anxiety. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 35 (3), 358-372. 

McCraty, R., Atkinson, M., & Tomasino, D. (2003). Impact of a workplace stress reduction program on blood pressure and emotional health in hypertensive employees. The Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine , 9 (3), 355-369. 

Misra, R., & McKean, M. (2000). College students' academic stress and its relation to their anxiety, time management, and leisure satisfaction. American Journal of Health Studies , 16 (1), 41. 

Schaufeli, W. B., & Taris, T. W. (2014). A critical review of the Job Demands-Resources Model: Implications for improving work and health. In Bridging occupational, organizational and public health (pp. 43-68). Springer Netherlands. 

Von Ah, D., Ebert, S., Ngamvitroj, A., Park, N., & Kang, D. H. (2004). Predictors of health behaviours in college students. Journal of advanced nursing , 48 (5), 463-474.